Obradovich: Strategies for raising voter turnout are worth a look

Dec. 2, 2013
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Michael Gronstal

Guy Vander Linden

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Iowa has one of the highest voter participation rates in the country — at least during presidential elections. But state legislators say they’ll consider a few ideas in 2014 that could affect the voting process in Iowa.

Senate Majority Leader Mike Gronstal, D-Council Bluffs, is scheduled to attend a conference in Washington, D.C., this week aimed at increasing voter access to the polls. The American Values First project is aimed at promoting legislative changes around the country to make it easier for voters to register and cast ballots. The Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee, which Gronstal chairs, is a partner in the project.

Rep. Guy Vander Linden, R-Oskaloosa, chairman of the House State Government Committee, also listed a few proposals he would like to consider in 2014.

Gronstal noted that the scope of proposals will be limited by the fact that the Legislature remains divided. Republicans hold the majority in the House; Democrats control the Senate.

“We will measure the kinds of things that we will introduce and attempt to pursue based on political reality, obviously,” Gronstal said. “We’re not going to spend a lot of time tilting at windmills. If these issues are dead in the House, I don’t know that we will pursue them.”

One idea Gronstal said he’s interested in considering would allow voters to opt out of ever going to the polls on Election Day and automatically vote absentee.

“Just for me personally, at times it gets difficult for me to vote. The school board elections come up, I have three meetings scheduled in Des Moines that day, and I didn’t think of it the week previous. So if I could set it up so I always voted absentee and they always sent a ballot to my home, I wouldn’t have that problem,” he said.

The proposal is a variation of Colorado’s law, which requires every voter to automatically receive a ballot by mail.

Expansion of absentee voting is likely to be more popular with Democrats, who have embraced early voting far more than Republicans. But Vander Linden also noted low turnout at school board elections as a concern.

He said in his district, turnout at the last school board election was only 9 percent. “That’s not atypical across the state,” he said. “And it seems to me that if we had those elections when we had everybody else’s elections, we might have a broader sampling of the electorate to decide who’s going to be on the school boards.”

Gronstal said there may be interest in ideas to improve participation in school board elections. But, he said, education advocates in the past have been reluctant to see their nonpartisan elections get mixed up in partisan politics. Scheduling them at the same time as city elections in off years might dampen the partisanship. There are other pros and cons to the idea, but it’s worth hashing out in the Legislature.

Vander Linden said he’s also interested in the idea of having runoff elections in the case of inconclusive primary votes where no candidate gets 35 percent. I wrote about this idea last week, and there was bipartisan interest. Gronstal, however, expressed reservations about taking up the issue while seven Republicans are battling for the U.S. Senate nomination. There are also six Democrats in the race for the open 1st Congressional District seat.

Vander Linden said he also expects the voter ID law to be back on the table. Secretary of State Matt Schultz has indicated he will continue to advocate for requiring all voters to show identification as a way to curb voter fraud.

However, this issue is sharply partisan and unlikely to get beyond the House floor again this year.

Vander Linden said he would be surprised if a voter ID law could pass the Senate. But, he added, “I was surprised that property taxes passed through both houses, too, last year, so who knows?”

Who knows, indeed. But it would be a worthwhile effort for lawmakers to try to find a bipartisan solution to improving voter participation in low-turnout elections.